Port 445?

...port 445 is "SMB over IP". (SMB is known as "Samba" and stands for "Server Message Blocks".) After all of the trouble the personal computer industry has had with Microsoft's original Windows NetBIOS ports 137 through

139, it is difficult to imagine or believe that Microsoft could have actually made things significantly worse with their replacement port 445 . . . but they did.

Whereas the great vulnerability originally created by Windows file sharing was that hackers could perhaps gain remote access to the contents of hard disk directories or drives, the default exposure of the Internet server Microsoft silently installed into every Windows 2000 system (where port 445 first appeared), allows malicious hackers to remotely log onto the computers of unsuspecting users ? across the Internet ? and more recently, though the use of some clever and readily available freeware tools (PsExec from SysInternals) to silently upload and run (in the remote user's computer) any programs of their choosing without the computer's owners ever being aware.

As you might imagine, malicious hackers have been having a field day scanning for port 445, then easily and remotely commandeering Windows machines. Even several hackers I have spoken with are unnerved by the glaring insecurities created by port 445. One chilling consequence of port 445 has been the relatively silent appearance of NetBIOS worms. These worms slowly but methodically scan the Internet for instances of port 445, use tools like PsExec to transfer themselves into the new victim computer, then redouble their scanning efforts. Through this mechanism, massive, remotely controlled Denial of Service "Bot Armies", containing tens of thousands of NetBIOS worm compromised machines, have been assembled and now inhabit the Internet.